ABSTRACT
With Gorbachev’s coming to power in 1985, the state’s position on the nature of international relations and capitalism changed along the lines staked out by mezhdunarodnik thinking on global problems and all-human solutions in the 1970s and especially in the early 1980s. Europe returned as a priority in the Soviet debate about the capitalist West as well as in foreign policy, with the state declaring 1987 ‘the year of Europe’. From 1987 to 1989, the state’s position on the EC and on the US presence in Western Europe took on a much more positive tinge. Yet again, the ground had been prepared by mezhdunarodnik writings. Under Gorbachev’s leadership, the state attempted to reform the Bolshevik
position, not to abolish it, but as the 1980s drew to a close, so did the reforms. Yet, as the state had also initiated a radical expansion of public political space at the beginning of the period, the Russian debate about Europe did not stop changing. The fully reconstituted liberal position attempted to make the state change even further in a westernising direction. The romantic national position, which emerged from the underground complete with a xenophobic and a spiritual wing just as at the beginning of the century, pressed in the opposite direction, protesting against the westernising and anti-Russian character of perestroyka. When the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991 and the Russian Federation
under Boris Yel’tsin donned the mantle of major successor state, the state initially took up an undiluted liberal position, advocating as much integration with Europe as speedily as possible. However, in the very moment of seeming liberal victory, in the intense years of 1991-93, the romantic nationalist position was making itself ever more strongly felt in the debate. When the weight of the state and its foreign policy landed on the fragile shoulders of the liberal position, moreover, it soon became clear that Russia’s relationship to Europe could not simply be one of ‘rejoining civilisation by taking Russia into Europe’. Thus, whereas the framework within which liberals saw Europe and the moral judgement they passed on it did
not change substantially, the optimism about the possible speed and thoroughness of Russian integration with Europe evaporated. The state’s position as well as the main thrust of the liberal position as such shifted in the direction of advocating good foreign relations all around, thus balancing the focus on Europe with a more Eurasian one. This uneasy stalemate between liberals and romantic nationalists lasted throughout the 1990s. At the same time, the xenophobic nationalists consolidated their alternative position in the wings. The content of the romantic nationalist position hardly changed as a result of the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet by seemingly confirming the xenophobic wing’s view of the Russian liberals as the errand-boys of the West whose dirty deeds could only serve to split the motherland, the collapse broadened their appeal. Moreover, a number of communists who found themselves without a position in the debate soon took up the romantic nationalist one. Throughout 1992 and 1993, the bearers of this position attacked the state’s position more and more vigorously. When, in the autumn of 1993, people like Vice-President Rutskoy and the Speaker of Parliament Khasbulatov joined the all-out attack on the state’s position, the state moved to redefine public political space. By literally shooting out and closing parliament, putting a new Constitution before the electorate and closing down the main printed conduits of the romantic nationalists, President Yel’tsin’s state tried to strengthen the liberal position by weakening the romantic nationalists. However, since the use of force was not sustained – for example, newspapers were soon allowed to reopen – romantic nationalists found their way back into parliament after the December elections. They were also able to continue publishing. Thus, the state’s attempt to redefine public political space proved a failure. The debate continued to be defined by a liberal and a romantic nationalist position, with the state still sticking to the liberal position but attempting to borrow elements from the spiritual romantic nationalists. This stand-off remained when Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin became the new
acting Russian president at the millennium and then the permanent holder of that office in May 2000. Under Putin, the debate became ever more ritualised, with two, and only two, representations dominating. An increasingly dominant xenophobic nationalist representation, which sees contemporary Europe as a decadent place, a false Europe that has betrayed its own true history, stands against an increasingly weaker westernising representation, which sees Europe as an economic and political model for Russia to emulate. The state, also increasingly, leant towards a xenophobic nationalist representation. In 2013-14, the xenophobic nationalist representation clearly occluded the westernising representation, to the point where a report produced for the Ministry of Culture on the country’s overall status argued that ‘Russia is not Europe’.
